What is management?
 
To be sure, the fundamental task of management remains the same: to make people capable of joint performance through common goals, common values, the right structures, and the training and development they need to perform and to respond to change.
 
Management guru and philosopher Peter F. Drucker defined in the industrial age of the 20th century the essence of management and taught us that management as a discipline does not change. But management is the competence of making people with different skills and knowledge capable of jointly responding to change by finding and applying
 
1.Common goals
2.Common values
3.The right structures
4.The right training
 
How do we respond to climate change?
 
Without doubt we need to respond to climate change, because the iceberg is melting as Harvard Business School professor John Kotter once wrote. Climate scientist Alice Bows Larkin explained the situation of our species and the global ecosystem in plain single digit numbers:
 
Current emission output puts us on a plus 4˚ Celsius trajectory until 2050; because emissions build up over time and changing global warming is like steering a large ocean vessel. We have to start much in advance and we need a huge area to make a turn around. If we want to avoid the plus 4˚ Celsius trajectory and settle for a plus 2˚ trajectory we need to act now and we need to change our behavior at large scale at all levels of social life, ourselves, corporations and governments.
 
What is management in the Anthropocene?
 
The Anthropocene is defined by human impact on the planet. It is therefore each one of us who can contribute to avoid climate change. But as with all challenges of scale it takes management to make people effective and productive. Management in the Anthropocene must therefore be summarized as
 
making people with different skills and knowledge capable of responding to climate change by

• Setting our own and our children’s survival, i.e. our species’ survival as our common goal.
• Understanding planet Earth as a global ecosystem, our collective home, without which we can not survive.
• Organizing ourselves in structures which serve this common goal best; in particular, the structures of our economic and educational systems.
• Training all human beings with the skills and competencies which are most conducive to reach our goal.

Management’s social function is in this sense securing survival.
 
Who will be the Chief Executive Officer?
 
We need somebody who connects deeply with both people and the planet. We need somebody with an extraordinary sense of self-control and an established routine of management by objectives. Who dares to step forward and who will receive a popular endorsement for this position?

The paradox in this age is that we all need to be CEO’s of our own individual economy, our own inner ecology, but still need a CEO to move us forward as a  whole.

More on the Anthropocene on NPR.

We reached yesterday without doubt the lowest point in this campaign – after many peak experiences; and I have to ask if it was a too visionary idea to invite Andy Couturier to China, because both his book’s message as well as the general state of the Chinese society are too far apart from each other as to be able to establish a meaningful dialogue.
 
Andy’s luncheon talk at Asia Pulp and Paper’s China HQ, one of the world’s largest paper manufacturers, revealed how far his messages are removed from corporate reality. While Andy spoke about rural self-sufficiency farming and the meaning of having downtime to think independently, about 70 employees played either with their cell phones or munched on McDonald’s burgers.
 
Later that day, we had a private event at Ecoland Club, an allotment garden community, where we discussed with permaculture aficionados the viability of the 五成二农 concept. Is five days a week urban life and two days a week rural life a solution to the nature alienation city folks experience? I don’t have an answer to this question, but some contact with nature seems to be better than none.
 
The founder of Ecoland told us about his difficulties to retain members and Andy showed with his answer how little he understands about the pressure which Chinese citizens are exposed to. He suggested to look people firmly into their eyes and tell them to take time for farming weekends instead of cram school. If it were all that easy…

When people say they want solutions, they're actually seeking only a specific kind of solution, one that leaves everything they have now intact but guarantees them more of something: more security, more healthcare, more education, more money, etc., but at no cost or inconvenience to themselves. In the real world, solutions change core values and processes. If they don't, they're not real solutions.
Have you ever asked yourself if there is a form of growth beyond GDP and real estate value which solves most of the problems we face as individuals and as a species? As we witness the greatest rural-urban migration in history have we considered whether urbanization is indeed the solution to all woes? What about the fact that most of us are in such a hurry to accomplish tasks that we do not even truly experience the purpose of what we are looking to accomplish?
 
Join Green Initiatives on a 3-week book tour in Shanghai and Beijing in June 2018 with Andy Couturier, author of The Abundance of Less – Lessons in Simple Living from Rural Japan, to discuss the rich life and subtle teachings of 10 Japanese sages who seem to have the answer to many questions. Author Andy Couturier received the 2017 Nautilus book award in the category green living & sustainability category for collecting their stories. He inspires with a message of abundance in well-being through a deliberate choice of less despite the omnipresent availability of material affluence.

Most of us understand that we are in a crisis, and that we all need to think of lots of solutions and start trying them all now. From rooftop gardens to generating electricity with our exercise bikes to better agricultural practices to maybe carbon neutral hydroponics, etc. But we should also take a pause and focus on some of the key principles that Andy’s book talks about. These include:  
 

• humility (Oizumi)
• doing things for yourself  & thinking for yourself (Oizumi)
• having enough downtime & and allowing idleness (Yamashita, (Murata, Atsuko)
• don’t be greedy with the soil (Yamashita)
• very little production, very little consumption (esp Nakamura)
• desire less (Murata)
• think about the results of your actions
  

 
Join one of our events and follow the campaign: https://taol.greeninitiatives.cn/ 
 
We will cover with Andy key subjects like

• Urban vs rural living: Where is the future of sustainability?
• Work & vocation: Is a mix of self-subsistence farming and craftsmanship the future of work?
  
• Post-materialism growth: Defining the self through what you make instead of what you have?
• Mind, wellbeing & sustainability: What is the impact of our mindset on the planet and on our own wellbeing?
• Downtime and technological addiction: How should we self-regulate the use of technology to lead richer lives?
• Convenience and consumption: What is the value of manual work and doing things instead of consuming them?
• Family life & sustainability: How can families engage in a sustainable lifestyle being most exposed to the pressures of society?
• Self-reliance farming & land distribution: What do they mean when they say “don’t be greedy with the soil”? What can we learn from their deep attachment with the land they farm?
• Education and thinking independently: why are we forced into thought patterns which block us often from personal growth?

 
So many of us don’t fit in the world we are given. Yet “being true to yourself ” is not easy either. If we go against the mainstream currents of society, too often we end up solidifying the ego. This is even more true for those who make art. So . . . how can we navigate a way through this thicket that feels natural to who we really are? [Andy Couturier]

Andy Couturier is an essayist, poet and writing teacher. He recently received the prestigious 2017 NAUTILUS literature award in the category ecology and sustainable living. He is the founder and creative director for The Opening, a center for creative writing. His essays and articles on ecology, sustainable living, and the problems inherent with nuclear power have appeared in The Japan Times, The North American Review, Adbusters, Kyoto Journal, The Oakland Tribune, and Creative NonFiction.